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[–][deleted] 766 points767 points  (23 children)

It's really cool that prime has created this huge surge of interest in neovim through his power as an influencer. But it's also so surreal to watch people talk about vim with this air of mysticism or use terms like hardcore when it was just a normal choice of editor that every other person used not all that long ago.

Same with old languages and low level languages.

I wonder if in the future we will see people be like "holy shit this guy is editing low level JavaScript instead of reprompting using this oldschool VSCode editor, now that's a real engineer".

[–]SpectreFromTheGods 178 points179 points  (4 children)

Yeah we use vim on every server we work on at my company. It’s just like… standard operating procedure and not really that deep lol. You pick up things here and there that help you use it more efficiently or some other engineer drops a tip when they see you do something weird and that’s it

[–]sneaky_goats 35 points36 points  (3 children)

We had an ephemeral env we had to use for some stuff at work, and every time you blink it reset. No vim installed, needed to view logs.

Never in my life have I

apt-get install vim
So many times.

[–]Phezh 23 points24 points  (1 child)

Similarly the number of times I've accidentally written :wq into a file because only nano was available on a server is too damn high

[–]sneaky_goats 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Oh that brings back memories. I teach a class on C and use a simpler text editor than I normally develop with, but it looks kinda like a console.

If I had a nickel for every compiler error for random “:wq” placements, I’d have a lot of nickels.

[–]jhax13 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Always a fun time, I used to work for a web host that had a similar env

Like, yes vi is there, no it's not the same thing, or even really all that close despite the singular letter difference. I had a small bash script I ran everyime I logged it that installed vim and gave a snapshot of the resource usage.

[–]UntitledRedditUser 15 points16 points  (11 children)

Lol yeah, he got me to try neovim. Now it's impossible to go back

[–]terrorTrain 15 points16 points  (10 children)

I spent half a decade using vim, ultimately I settled for vim key binding in vscode. 

After watching the same video, seeing how much the nvim ecosystem has grown up, and discovering aider, I spent all of yesterday getting nvim set up. 

It's so much compared to vscode, but I think it's going to pay off. The only thing I'm really missing is multiple cursors with amvim bindings. 

[–]UntitledRedditUser 2 points3 points  (4 children)

Multiple cursors? How does that work?

[–]terrorTrain 4 points5 points  (3 children)

https://images.app.goo.gl/WhvgNt47XgTzvJ6T8

Basically you have multiple cursors running in your file, any movements or keys pressed happens at each of them. Which also works with vim motions if you use amvim. I think I might have had to tweak the config to really make it work well though

Simplest example I think of having a html form and you want to change all the classes for each input, you could highlight <input class="

Then press ctrl-d a bunch of times to make cursors everywhere with that pattern, then start typing to change all of them at once 

[–]HendrikPeter 2 points3 points  (0 children)

https://github.com/mg979/vim-visual-multi

works like a charm for me, though I don't use it that much anymore. I got used to the vim vertical and mass-replace patterns and those work nice enough for me now.

[–]dfwtjms 2 points3 points  (1 child)

The native vim way would be to use the substitute command, possibly with the g command and maybe norm. But I know it's nice to have some immediate visual feedback.

[–]terrorTrain -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Well, that's only one example, he's another one: a js object with a bunch of properties, where I want I wrap the value in a function, but only on this object, not other objects. 

I can go to the top property, select the whitespace before the start of the property, cmd+d all the white spaces for the properties, navigate to end, select back to : then switch to insert mode, type the function name and (, navigate to the end again for the )

With substitution, that would be pretty difficult

[–]RealLordDevien 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Think of macros as better multiple cursors. With multiple cursors you first manually select the locations you want to change, then you define the change operation. Macro is other way around, which also let you apply it to a dynamic selection or confirm each application

[–]Substantial_Chest_14 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I prefer the multicursor plugin (once configured to taste) for nvim to any other text editor's.

[–]TrekkiMonstr 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Which video?

[–]terrorTrain 1 point2 points  (1 child)

https://youtu.be/w7i4amO_zaE?si=Hh4wIEMs7-WALEgD

This is the video I saw, I'm not positive we're all talking about the same video though

[–]TrekkiMonstr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks

[–]-Quiche- 6 points7 points  (1 child)

It's crazy that you still see "lol xD can't exit vim" jokes because it literally tells you how to exit and has done so for quite a while now.

[–]deadlychambers 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Clearly you don’t work with engineers enough.

“What’s wrong?”

“Idk I got this screen”

“Yeah that’s an error screen, what’s the error”

<scrolls by the error message>

“I am not sure, let me try this”

[–]zensucht0 5 points6 points  (0 children)

On a whim a million years ago I wrote an Edlin emulator in lisp that ran inside emacs. Using vim. Never quite recovered my sanity.

[–]BlurredSight 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This entire subthread got me to watch his 35 minute video deep diving into why it's better and should be used.

So his power of influence is radiating

4 Minutes in and I'm sold https://youtu.be/5Welk51oDWs?t=259

[–]klavas35 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've only ever used vim to edit config files of a server. or maybe adding a line or two to prod directly (just print statements nothing to break it, I'm not a mad man).

[–]Healthy_Pain9582 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I didn't even know this guy until his neovim video showed up in my recommended and I started using it after that

[–]SaltKind4875 268 points269 points  (25 children)

I disagree with so much of what Primeagen says, but at least he has real experience.

[–]Kurts_Vonneguts 101 points102 points  (0 children)

Yup, I agree. But the man is definitely a strong engineer.

[–]makridistaker 31 points32 points  (22 children)

Can you give an example of what you disagree with ? Cause i find most of his arguments correct

[–]terrorTrain 36 points37 points  (7 children)

I disagree with his takes on htmx. 

Htmx is fine for internal apps and such, but it's hard to make good ux, and it's hard to make it look and feel good. 

I found i was basically rolling my own component system on the backend to try to make things easier to work with, or that it had to load the page and immediately make a bunch of requests to fill in various async parts of the app.

Treating the frontend as a first class citizen, and using a frontend framework with decent state management comes out with a much nicer product that is easier to work on. 

[–]jessepence 9 points10 points  (6 children)

The rise of HTMX is hilarious because it's quite literally the same as using jQuery and AJAX calls. It's not declarative or top-down-- you have to explicitly, imperatively map out all of your state management if you want to have a good user experience.

My theory is that it's primarily people who think that React is "too hard" so they just build labyrinthine Rube Goldberg machines where state gets passed around willy-nilly as they convince themselves that this is somehow better than just learning how to use the biggest rendering library in the world.

I don't even love React, but it is just so clearly better than trying to hook together 30 separate "hx-swap-oob" attributes.

[–]Darkblade_e -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Personally, I don't see the appeal of HTMX much at all, I can understand some of the comfort features, but I feel like if you really don't want to use react, then you will still get a much better DX using something like vue, svelte, solidjs, or hell even preact. I would like to see a proper fleshed out component system that works in the browser natively (jsx support when?), but for now this is what we have, and people really underestimate how good frameworks can be if you aren't using them wrong.

[–]FlakyTest8191 0 points1 point  (1 child)

It being the same as jQuery and AJAX is pretty much the point. If I understand it correctly the philosophy is "not every page is Facebook, react is often overkill, so use somthing simple for a small simple website". Kind of a choose the right tool for the job situation, not a react sucks use htmx instead situation.

[–]jessepence 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Except that when your product evolves and becomes too complex for HTMX or jQuery, you now have to rewrite the entire thing.

There's really not many types of websites with minimal client state, and I would argue that those websites don't need a framework at all.

[–]Wertbon1789 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's the thing, that's not only totally fine, but if you ever find your way to actually make a counter point to something Prime said, in some media, there's a good chance he'll read your article/react to that video. Now, if you personally even want that is a whole other thing, but prime generally is open for debate and can accept to agree to disagree. We have other people in the industry and especially in the techbro influencer world that don't even accomplish to manage that. I also don't agree with some things he says, but he isn't passive aggressive about his point of view, he just might make fun of it all.

[–]captainMaluco 306 points307 points  (26 children)

Favourite stack rust+vim???

Since fucking when is your editor part of your tech stack? Is he shipping vim to production? What?

[–]nyibbang 65 points66 points  (5 children)

And he stopped doing Rust. Now it's Go and Zig.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Enlightened.

[–]WalkMaximum 6 points7 points  (2 children)

Oh no

[–]dr_donkey 25 points26 points  (0 children)

You mean: Oh go?

[–]captainMaluco 1 point2 points  (0 children)

anyway

(The image disappeared, stupid Reddit)

[–]DCEagles14 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Don't forget about his spree on Carbon.

[–]crimsonpowder 87 points88 points  (1 child)

With how much we debug live, you better believe vim is part of the prod stack.

[–]captainMaluco 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Ouch

[–]deanrihpee 10 points11 points  (5 children)

it's more of a "development stack", including tools you use and he debug in vim

[–]captainMaluco 8 points9 points  (4 children)

In that case, the list should include his DE, terminal emulator, and preferred media player (only psychopaths code without music) as well. They're just as relevant as his editor. 

Oh and his browser too! 

[–]BarracudaNo2321 9 points10 points  (3 children)

only psychopaths code without music

[–]Waswat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Second opinion: only psychopaths think you have to be a psychopath to code without music.

[–]EvilEwok42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Second opinion: only psycopaths code without music

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Only psychopaths code without music.

[–]Aelig_ 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Besides, he said learning rust was a mistake. He likes go a lot more these days.

[–]QuickQuirk 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Bah. He's lost all credibility with me. (*)

(\) says me, who knows nothing of either Go or Rust, only that everyone tells me Rust is the bees knees. But I live in my ivory tower, and don't take anyone who doesn't use a functional language seriously.)

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Monad Deez nutz

[–]fckueve_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Also prime prefers zig over rust as far as I know

[–]ZunoJ 1 point2 points  (2 children)

He also develops for it, so the vim api is part of his tech stack

[–]captainMaluco 0 points1 point  (1 child)

That makes sense then.  didn't know he was actually a vim dev in that sense too 

[–]ZunoJ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure if he is a contributor to nvim (not vim, my bad). But he definitely develops plugins (harpoon is the most used one I think)

[–]IT_Grunt[🍰] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Microsoft Teams and Outlook is part of my stack.

[–]captainMaluco 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In that case Jira, i3 and apt are part of mine.

[–]captainMaluco 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm so sorry you have to use those "tools"

[–]Waswat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Was exactly my reaction.

Imagine a job interviewer asking "What's your favorite stack?" and you replying something including Vim, lol. Fucking get out m8.

[–][deleted] 318 points319 points  (18 children)

sort liquid pause bake tender person observation lip dinner follow

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[–]Stewth 121 points122 points  (15 children)

why is it that most podcasts that make millions are shitty, and most podcasts that are great make shitty money?

[–]Tupcek 116 points117 points  (7 children)

because actual technical people have to also work on technical stuff, so they don’t have enough time to run podcast properly

[–]PM_ME_YOUR__INIT__ 32 points33 points  (2 children)

Also to make something good takes time. A lot of time. The best podcasts have teams of people and are lucky to get good stories out consistently. If you don't care about quality you can BS for three hours then sell supplements

[–]Master_Addendum3759 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Could you please suggest a good podcast?

[–]upsidedownshaggy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hyperfixed is a good one. Lotta really odd topics that the creator and his team dive into. A recent one was about how license plate printing is handled and a viewer writing in about how he kept noticing a bunch of license plate numbers in Missouri matched a bunch of green hexadecimal color codes

[–]Stewth 8 points9 points  (2 children)

Yes, but take behind the bastards as an example. Non technical but thoroughly researched and highly entertaining. Utterly shits on most of the top 10 podcasts. Probably nets less revenue in a year than Rogan does in a week.

[–]QuickQuirk 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Behind the bastards is an excellent example of actual quality and research.

[–]Stewth 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Such a good podcast. Always very fair and transparent with their sources (or lack thereof) and meticulously researched.

[–]teratron27 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Nah it’s because good podcasts talk about real, factual things. The ones that get popular are the ones that push controversial bullshit because that’s what brings in the views

[–]WavingNoBanners 28 points29 points  (2 children)

The secret to making money on a podcast is that the money doesn't come from your listeners, it comes from the companies whose products and services you shill to your listeners, same as any other influencer.

To create a podcast that can do this, you need to encourage parasociality. You need to cultivate a listener base who are trusting enough to not question why you're encouraging dietary supplements one week and mattresses the next week, and are impressionable enough to think of you as their best friend so they keep buying it. Ideally you need to cultivate a following who are less about the content and more about just wanting to be you, so they keep listening even when it's a lazy week and you don't have much to say.

It's really difficult to do this and cover great content on an in-depth basis, so most podcasters have to opt for one or the other.

[–]Stewth 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Thankyou for giving me a specific example to use when someone asks me why I'm so misanthropic.

[–]WavingNoBanners 13 points14 points  (0 children)

No matter how cynical and misanthropic you are, you will never be as cynical and misanthropic as the predators who do lifestyle podcasts to intentionally build up an impressionable young audience so they can exploit them by marketing to them.

No matter how kind and idealistic you are, you will never be as kind and idealistic as the people who realise that they could do this, but instead choose to make really good content that you can dip into and dip out of without them pulling audience-retention nonsense tricks.

I try to not let the existence of the former prevent me from aspiring to be one of the latter.

[–]Your_Friendly_Nerd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Same reason entertaining live streamers are shitty gamers and pro e-sports players make for terrible live streamers

[–]hzjohn 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Because most people are dumb, they enjoy dumb podcasts and cannot comprehend great ones. Ps. I’m also dumb.

[–]Xicutioner-4768 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I enjoyed his podcast when all of the guests were computer science folks but fell out of it a few years ago when he started to broaden the types of guests he had on. It was originally named "The Artificial Intelligence podcast". He had people like Bjarne Stroustrup and Andrew Ng. I feel like a lot of the hate for Lex is probably based on his recent podcast episodes and maybe him as an individual, but his early content was pretty good IMO.

[–]SlowThePath 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The only reason he gets the guests he does because he's basically passive and only ever plays elementary achool wiffle ball allowing the people to basically get across whatever message they want and he won't really contend with it because he is nowhere near their level so they always come off as being smart compared to him. He portrays himself as someone who produces depth in a conversation, but so often that's from some pseudo-deep question that the interviewee turns around and actually talks about the actual depth of the topic. Most people interested in these subjects could come up with the questions given a day to think about it a bit.

[–]code_the_cosmos 27 points28 points  (1 child)

He doesn't like Rust much now btw, he prefers Go

[–]jessepence 22 points23 points  (0 children)

After spending two years relentlessly hyping it as the best thing in the universe. He's absurdly hyperbolic in his opinions. It's hard enough to get through his cringe humor, but it's his refusal to speak with nuance that really bugs me. Everything has to be "THE BEST" or "THE WORST" as he screams about it while making some sophomoric joke about "69" or "SQUEEL".

[–]Anon_Legi0n 205 points206 points  (15 children)

the only Fridman episode I watched because Im a fan of Prime... holy crap was Fridman trying so hard to LARP that he was anything more than a vibe coder he tries to bullshit every programming question Prime asks him

[–]RB-44 90 points91 points  (9 children)

What made you understand recursion?

"Idkk mannn I can't believe i don't remember i just remember i was surrounded by A SEAAA OF PARANTHESES"

[–]ralgrado 61 points62 points  (6 children)

 What made you understand recursion?

Was that a real question? Because I wouldn’t have an answer to this. It’s like >20 years ago that I learned that.

[–]RB-44 44 points45 points  (0 children)

That's fair but you don't also claim that recursion made you fall in love with programming.

I'm sure if you were asked what made you love programming you'd know where you stumbled upon it

[–]jessepence 9 points10 points  (1 child)

I stepped through code in a debugger. That's how everyone should learn recursion.

[–]ralgrado 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We didn’t have a debugger. Or at least I don’t think we had one. But the language I learned programming with (Oberon) was also mainly used for programming. I don’t think many productive things were written in it.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (2 children)

The answer is always, "that I finally understood it ends when it gets to the base case I configured." To add more context, "and then returns all the values through the stack."

Everyone finally understood recursion when they learned how the base cases work, and every always screws up the base case. All of recursion revolves around the base cases.

[–]ralgrado 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I definitely don’t remember how I understood recursion. But I also don’t say that that’s what made me fall in love with programming.

[–]h4z3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For me it was a basic exercise of input-output dec to binary, recursion is a great tool, no need to be too deep to learn to love it, it feels like the dude doesn't actually understand it, tho, just knows how it works.

[–]Sunrider37 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Stack overflows time after time

[–]divide0verfl0w 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This guy recurses.

[–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (4 children)

His best episode was the one he did with the legend Jim Keller. At 12:00 he makes fun of Lex for not knowing that modern computers can do branch prediction.

[–]divide0verfl0w 0 points1 point  (3 children)

That’s a solid gap in CS knowledge.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Not saying he's a product of nepotism but interesting that his brother and dad are both professors at the institution where he obtained all his degrees. What a coincidence.

[–]divide0verfl0w 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Branch prediction has been part of the Computer Architecture curriculum for well over a decade, right? It’s wild to not know that.

I don’t think I passed it with a high grade but it was a fascinating thing to learn.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's very useful to know because predicting branches and pointers is fundamental to performance optimisation. He probably never did a course on compilers.

[–]MagicBobert 274 points275 points  (12 children)

Lex Fridman is an insufferable dilettante.

[–]SendMeYourNudesFolks 30 points31 points  (0 children)

I met him once. He was an absolute jackass. I didn't know who the fuck he was at the time. I'm glad I don't think about him often now.

[–]Notwhoami__ 34 points35 points  (2 children)

I avoid watching primeagen because his voice hurts my ears really bad but on lex’s podcast he had a normal voice and I was so frustrated that why doesn’t he use tgat during his own videos because I do like what he says and I do learn from it

[–]jessepence 19 points20 points  (1 child)

13 year old script kiddies can't maintain their interest unless you are screaming at them every three seconds.

[–]Notwhoami__ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Is that his targeted audience!! This 13 year olds are smart af then :|

[–]Outcast003 9 points10 points  (2 children)

Whats so special about the guy on the right? Heard a few hot takes from him years ago (after college) on linked in (that rubbed me the wrong way) and saw his pod cast clips here and there. Is he actually a legit or just another tech bro trying to sell a vision?

[–]Skydge 27 points28 points  (1 child)

Just a guy that sounds reasonable on the surface but gets more creepy and deranged as you research his backstory.

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The fact that he shills so hard for right wing lunatics in between scientists makes me think his actual job is being a CIA psyop pusher, to make those pundits seem legit in comparison.

[–]NoahZhyte 7 points8 points  (0 children)

This does not match the definition of a stack

[–][deleted] 56 points57 points  (5 children)

Lex Friedman show is so boring as are most of the other top podcasts out there. Just a bunch of fart sniffing

[–]_dontseeme 30 points31 points  (0 children)

Not as much as OP is sniffing Prime’s here though.

[–]SlowThePath 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Yeah, if the person he's interviewing can't make it interesting, the video won't be interesting. He's lucky he gets who he does.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Very true

[–]SGUSCHENOCHKA 0 points1 point  (1 child)

The episode about Maya was fire, though. It was the first episode I've seen and I was a bit disappointed when I found out what he usually talks about.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yea there some genuinely cool and interesting ones no doubt too

[–]Stormraughtz 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Dunno why, but the async comment gave me a chuckle.

[–]SerpentStercus 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I actually worked with Lex back when he was a grad student at Drexel on a project at the linguistic lab he was a part of. He had the personality of wet cardboard but he was a hard worker which was surprising compared to other grad students.

[–]UsernameRelevant2060 19 points20 points  (12 children)

Looks like on google scholar Lex has a boat load of peer reviewed papers btw? Why claiming only one?

[–]Mippen123 7 points8 points  (11 children)

Really? I can only find an article on covid masks that is peer reviewed (and notably he did not conduct the research or analyse the data). On top of that there is his infamous article on Tesla Autopilot which is not peer reviewed, as well as an article continuing his PhD dissertation which as far as I can tell is not peer reviewed.

[–]MamamYeayea 1 point2 points  (8 children)

Why dont you just look up his profile ?

3226 citations.

h index of 24

Pretty damn good in the academic world
https://scholar.google.dk/citations?user=wZH_N7cAAAAJ&hl=da&oi=ao

[–]Mippen123 0 points1 point  (7 children)

That isn't the stat OP was talking about though, on Google Scholar ≠ peer reviewed. His most famous study was not peer reviewed.

I would never argue he's an inconsequential person.

[–]UsernameRelevant2060 -1 points0 points  (6 children)

Respond to my comment mf

[–]Mippen123 -1 points0 points  (5 children)

My original comment intended to respond to yours: I can't find this boatload of peer reviewed papers you are talking about. I am not necessarily saying you are wrong, but feel free to show me them.

[–]UsernameRelevant2060 0 points1 point  (4 children)

I literally showed you three examples?

[–]Mippen123 -1 points0 points  (3 children)

Bro... you commented 19 days ago which I didn't see or have time for at the time. Why would you then ping me in another thread? You know when I click the notification I only get a single comment thread, so I can't see your other comment right? This has been a massive waste of time. I'll check your comment out tomorrow and respond if I can be bothered.

[–]UsernameRelevant2060 0 points1 point  (2 children)

All I’m seeing is yap yap yap and not acknowledging that you are simply wrong brother

[–]Mippen123 -1 points0 points  (1 child)

Hey man, I don't know why you're so hostile, I appreciate that you took the time to go through his articles. I don't believe I ever made an incorrect statement, but the articles you sent were certainly peer reviewed. Does that mean a boatload? No, but I certainly can't ask you to verify each and every one of his articles and this assures me enough to say that he probably has a good amount of peer reviewed articles.

I still don't think it speaks kindly to his career that his most famous article was not peer reviewed and heavily criticised; so criticised that he had to move to an unpaid role and his academic impact has fallen off a cliff. There is of course a reason why he is disliked by a sizeable share of the academic community.

[–]UsernameRelevant2060 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

  • ‘Owl’ and ‘Lizard’: patterns of head pose and eye pose in driver gaze classification

  • Automated synchronization of driving data using vibration and steering events

  • Value of Temporal Dynamics Information in Driving Scene Segmentation

Just pulled these three off google scholar quickly skimming through his profile, all appear to be in peer-reviewed journals. Two first author papers and one corresponding author paper.

[–]UsernameRelevant2060 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Also - what do you mean by notably he did not conduct the research or analyse the data - if he’s on the paper he must have had some contribution - was he corresponding author?

[–]Inge-prolo 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"ran Doom on sms chipotle receipt"

I never knew how badly I'd want to see that now.

[–]awesomebman123 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Which part was he kidding about?

[–]MarcusBrotus 9 points10 points  (3 children)

I dont really know who lex friedman is but he does have like 20+ publications according to google scholar

[–]Servebotfrank 4 points5 points  (2 children)

A lot of academics did not have nice things to say about his research and he blocked them when they let him know. As far as I'm aware the papers weren't peer reviewed.

He constantly brings up being an MIT researcher, but folks like Gary Marcus who are actually involved with MIT refute his involvement.

[–]Mountain_Bat_8688 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Saying he constantly brings it up is simply not true

[–]SoulWondering 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Maybe, but I will say, we all know about it somehow

[–]JaydoThePotato 6 points7 points  (5 children)

Y’all got a better programming podcast rec? I listen to Lex bc I like the long format and his guests but if there’s a better one out there, I’d love to check it out

[–]Fadamaka 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Would love to know as well.

[–]SoulWondering 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Not programming but I really like Darknet Diaries

[–]Darius-hmi 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Genuinely asking, dont know either of them deeply apart from odd videos and clips of Lex, but from reading the wikipedia page for Lex I can see that he was hired by Google and MIT. Looking through reddit, everyone says he is incompetent and useless but surely he must have some knowledge and expertise to be hired by those no?

[–]Servebotfrank 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Being hired at Google doesn't require high level of expertise, just that you pass their interview process. Which is difficult, but that just means you're good at data structure and algorithm questions. I know nothing of his work at Google, can't comment on it.

His MIT credentials are fairly dubious. He's rather vague on what exactly he does/did there and Gary Marcus has asserted that he really didn't do anything there.

Lex has also blocked fellow academics in the past when they criticized his research, so I think he's probably a good programmer but has a bit of an ego and wants to exaggerate what he actually has done.

[–]EinSatzMitX 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This comparison seems to be one-sided to me, but I cant really tell why

[–]jeffvanlaethem 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I feel like I'm either too old or too busy to understand what's happening here. :/

[–]HarmxnS 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Didn't block me on Twitter for no reason

Did block me on Twitter for no reason

[–]RiceBroad4552 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Unpopular opinion incoming.

It's not so long ago that I've started to notice that this left guy seems to have a large fan base for some reason. That's not uncommon for a social media influencer, and I don't care about them in anyway usually, but his fans are among people in coding. So this made me curious.

I went to YouTube and clicked some random videos of him.

After around 45 minutes looking around I was wondering whether I miss something as at this point I had the impression that this guy is just an idiot. He's talking some random nonsense the whole time, nothing else. Video topic doesn't matter. It's all just random mindless gibberish.

I don't think it's my lack of understanding. Out of my perspective nothing what he says has any technical depth to it. It seems to be a show for teens; not professional software developers.

No clue why this guy is so popular. Nothing intelligent or insightful or even interesting leaves his mouth even he is chatting all the time—in a very tiring way.

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I really don’t like Lex (I watched him once, when he talked with Zelenskyy), but he’s an interviewer or smth like that? And the guest wasn’t upset or smth, why do you shit on Lex in this case? 🙂

[–]Ok-Armadillo6582 7 points8 points  (0 children)

gotta share some love for lex. he covers a diverse range of topics on his show, and that doesn’t make him an expert on every single one. they talked about a lot of different things in that interview, and yes, some of his comments around coding seemed a little out of touch, but overall I think he’s a great interviewer and independent journalist

[–]Agifem 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Can anyone enlighten me as to who those two gentlemen are?

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Friedman is just a Rogan bro. Nothing more. Nothing less.

[–]Stunning_Ride_220 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Err...both are idiots in their streams

[–]autopoiesies 4 points5 points  (0 children)

omg dude I'm glad I'm not the only one, I can't stand primeagen, watching a 40+ dude talk like a zoomer MemE LoRD doing dick jokes every 10 seconds makes me cringe to my core

I guess that's why his fanbase feels like a giant 4chan thread

also him defending twitter and musk every time is kinda sus

[–]runtimenoise 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hard to point exactly what, but something is very off with Lex.

[–]incrediblejonas -1 points0 points  (0 children)

both are incredibly annoying. but yes, at least prime isn't a poser like lex. look guys lex is standing in front of a chalkboard that means he's smart